


Summer Reading

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Children's Literature, Gen, Hot Weather, Literary References & Allusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:02:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26067664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: “Did you ever readTo Kill A Mockingbirdin school?”
Kudos: 7





	Summer Reading

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: n/a  
> A/N: Originally written for the msrfanzine.

The end of summer was a hot held breath. The city strained against the flat blue of the sky; the air conditioning coughed weakly and gave up. Heat dripped in through the skylights of the basement office, puddling in the center of the room. Scully wilted inside her suit. She’d had her shirt lightly starched at the cleaners’ in an attempt to keep it crisp, but it crumpled, sticking to her sweaty skin. She pulled her hair off her neck and fanned her damp skin, then gave up and tied it up with a rubber band. It would hurt when she took it out, but the temporary cooling effect was worth it. Mulder heaved a sigh. He’d loosened his tie and rolled up his shirt sleeves. She caught glimpses of the golden shadow of his skin through the V of his unbuttoned collar. 

God, it was hot. She fanned herself with an old issue of _The Lone Gunman_. Lurid headlines flapped back and forth, global conspiracies barely stirring the soupy air. 

“Did you ever read _To Kill A Mockingbird_ in school?” Scully asked abruptly, setting down the magazine. She’d given up on the paperwork for a moment - the sweat from her hand had smeared the ink.

“You want to hide secret messages in a hole in the wall outside Skinner’s office?” Mulder asked.

“Yes,” Scully said, hiding her smile in her cheek, “but that’s not what I was thinking of.”

“If there’s a rabid dog around, you’re a better shot than I am,” he said.

“There’s a passage that I always think of when it’s hot like this,” she said, ignoring him. “It’s about how all the women in the neighborhood take cold showers and powder themselves until it looked like icing. The description of the neighborhood drinking sweet tea and lemonade and sitting under the fans on the porches always stuck with me for some reason.”

“As long as you don’t use talc,” Mulder said. “It’s full of asbestos. We’d have to have you abated.”

“Mulder, that’s a rumor,” Scully told him.

He leaned back in his chair. “What I remember is the violence. And the kid putting too much syrup on his pancakes.”

“Mm,” she said. Her thoughts eddied, the still air dulling her senses. How was it, she wondered, that the details of a book she’d read twenty years ago had faded, but the feeling of it was still there? There was a Mockingbird-shaped cabinet in her memories, full of fragments of thoughts. The snap of bone. Gregory Peck’s face. A stern little girl refusing dresses. And the heat, of course: the bonfire crackle of emotion, the panting air.

She gave in and shrugged off her jacket, the relief of it almost orgasmic. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She’d been keeping the jacket on because she’d worn the wrong bra this morning and she knew it was visible through the limp defeated cotton of her shirt. But Mulder had seen her bra before, in Oregon, and a few other times they’d been caught in the rain. It was too hot for decorum. She pressed a can of Coke to her throat, but it had gone tepid in the half-hour since she’d gotten it from the vending machine. No more shock of cold jangling down her spine. She eyed the can as if it had betrayed her and banished it to the corner of the desk where Mulder would drink it at some point.

“If you could commit a crime you knew you’d get away with, what would it be?” Mulder asked, rolling an imaginary basketball off his fingertips.

“I hate this game,” she said.

“Humor me,” he told her, “and I’ll buy you something cool after work.”

She’d always been susceptible to him. Knowing Mulder, he had an idea in mind already of something to startle her with. He’d tell her to wait on the sidewalk somewhere and then make her close her eyes when he returned. She’d comply, grumbling a little, and he’d slip something into her mouth, a fragment of mango paleta dipped in chili or the resilient tenderness of mochi. But there was the game to play first, the price she paid for the straw between her lips or the sudden chill on the tip of her tongue. 

“I get away with it or I’m exonerated?” she asked.

He waved his hand. “No one even considers it a crime if you’re the one doing it.”

“I’d park anywhere I wanted,” she declared. “Even on street cleaning days.”

“Lawful but boring,” he said, setting up for an invisible hoop. “I’m disappointed, Scully.” He pushed his imaginary basketball through the air and she held up two fingers and lifted an eyebrow.

“Fine,” she said. “There are a couple of guys who behaved inappropriately when Missy was drunk at a party in high school. I’d put them under surveillance. If they’re still terrible people, I’d take care of them.”

He whistled softly. “From free parking to potential murder.”

“Don’t mess with the Scully women,” Scully said simply. 

“I know better than that,” he told her.

“So what’s your crime of choice?” Scully asked. 

He grinned. “I’d break into the Smithsonian and stay the night.”

She stared at him. “Which museum?”

“Natural History,” he said. “I guess I imprinted pretty hard on _The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler_." 

"I expected something bigger,” she said. 

“Huh,” he teased, “people don’t usually tell me that.”

She rolled her eyes. “A grander gesture. Robbing a bank. Borrowing the Constitution so the Lone Gunmen can stop saying the one in the Archives is a fake. A coup d'état.”

“I’m a man of simple pleasures,” he told her. 

“Meanwhile I’m a murderer in the making,” she grumbled.

“We’ve both learned a lot about each other today,” he said cheerfully. “And hey, Scully, if I’m ever close to making that list? Let me know.”

“I better get something positively frosty,” she said.

“So cold you’ll get goosebumps,” he promised. 

She shivered in anticipation. “Good,” she said. “You’re not on the list. For now.”

“Ah, Scully,” he said fondly, and they returned to their positions in the tableau: him flipping stickily through wild ramblings printed on cheap paper, her chronicling their misadventures phrase by smeary phrase, turning the truth into history.


End file.
